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Monday, May 7, 2012

It’s Monday, What are you reading? May 7th

Check out the other folks who link up! Thanks again to Teach Mentor Texts for hosting this each week.

Well, one of the geekiest weeks of my year wrapped up this
weekend. I got to spend two days at the PA gifted conference, I celebrated Star
Wars Thursday (which is every week) followed by May the Fourth Be With You,
watched Avengers in the theater, hit Free Comic Book Day, and then saw a stage
production of Wrinkle in Time. Whew!

I'm also noticing the onset of the end of year panic mode - as a gifted resource teacher I have a TON of end of year paperwork... and it may need to start coming home at night. Likely, my reading and writing for myself will suffer for a while.

Reading this week:

Newbery Challenge –

I’m continuing to use audio books to help me in this one,
and finished A Single Shard. I enjoyed the audio (I think the English
accent of the narrator helps), though I don’t always enjoy the “tear jerker”
ending style of book.

I picked up my next three Newbery books from the library on
Saturday – Invincible Louisa, Dobry, and Caddie Woodlawn.
I need to pick up the pace!

Batty About Books –

Kathy and I are reading A World Without Heroes. I
have finished my second section of the book (through page 190) and will be chatting
with Kathy about it this week. Check out our discussion from last week here.

Comics:

Yes, with Free Comics day, I did grab quite a few new reads.
I read the Star Wars/Serenity combo
(very geeky fun!) I checked out the Red 5 book which included Atomic Robo (very, very odd – with the
Hadron collider combined with robots and talking dinosaurs) and NeoZoic (intriguing world where
dinosaurs still survive and mix it up with humans – but they don’t appear to
talk) I also read the Buffy/Guild flip,
the DC comics “Supeman Family” combined with Green Lantern, and the Archaia
hardback that has Mouseguard and Cow Boy. I pre-ordered the release of Cow Boy
and I’m looking forward to that!

Jane Yolen (for
my Mentor post that went live Sunday)

Time for Naps (adorable picture book)

The Mary Celeste (a book about an unsolved mystery –
amazing nonfiction)

Bedtime Read-Alouds

Younger is still working me through Swiftly Tilting
Planet (and we saw a stage production of Wrinkle in Time this
weekend, plus he started us watching the movie itself, but we ran out of time
before bed last night to finish it)

Older switches books occasionally. The last few nights we
worked on Ender’s Shadow. I had to dance around a bit of explanation at the
beginning of the book. Thankfully, he’s at that age where some things go over
his head and don’t require discussion. He loves the story overall, and can
handle it, but I’d generally wait until middle school on these titles.